At Last, Progress

The scale has now shown a loss three days in a row! Which means that although I probably shouldn't believe the actual number (although I want to, because it's good), I can go ahead and accept that progress has been made.

And thank goodness, because last night I opened the pickle jar at 8:00 and felt as guilty as if I had eaten a pan of brownies. Which reminds me that I must stop on my way home and pick up more bunny food--the carrots are no points, and the pickles I like (spicy bread-and-butter pickles that my mother got me addicted to over Christmas--thanks, ma) are a point for three lousy pickle chips. I honestly didn't think I'd eat 32 oz of carrots in four days, but they are all gone, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy them. Plus, they help cut down on my nervous tension.

The other thing I've been trying to do is add up all my fat calories for the day and stay on the treadmill until the treadmill's "calories from fat" ticker hits that number. It's sobering, and I think it's given me a new way to think about fat in my diet. It certainly gave me a good way to think about the brownies I didn't buy this week--even if I could have scraped the points together, I would have been on the treadmill all week long.

Okay, I'm off to savor my victory by measuring the sugar I put into my tea. Mmmmmm, sweet victory!

Portrait of an Addict

You would think that if sixteen pairs of underwear arrived at your door, you'd be pretty much good to go, wouldn't you?

Au contraire. If you're me, you might look and say, "Hey, I should have eighteen pairs of underwear in this box." These things happen.

Well, I guess when you order eighteen pairs of underwear at a time (there was a sale--and there were so many colors! Oh, who am I kidding--the intervention is at 8 tomorrow morning, and you should bring brownies because of the triple-constraint) you become such a valuable customer that when you call and say that two of them are missing, they just send you the darn underwear. Because really, it's $6 and shipping, and people like me are obviously keeping them in business.

But it made me think. Where'd the other two pairs go?

I do not want to know what my UPS driver is wearing under his uniform.

I'm a genius!

Because I could have told them this. This is why the room that I was in laughed hysterically when our fearless leader said that now that the layoffs at our company were over, everyone must be chipper and ready to go, right? You betcha, honey. We'll be right with you. Right after we finish updating our resumes, absorbing our fallen colleagues' workloads and generally trying to prepare for an uncertain future. But after that, we'll be whistling while we work. Honest.

To her credit, my manager has been a star. She's encouraged honesty when we're overworked and found solutions. In other departments, people are actually being told that it's not overwork, it's an opportunity. Oh, sure, because I was looking at it without my rose-colored glasses. And my crack pipe. I have got to stop mislaying that.

A Dear Jon Letter

My faith in "The Daily Show" is officially shaken. They said that Harold Bloom is America's foremost expert on literature. And in spite of their liberal use of irony, they were serious. If only they'd given me some way out. "A recognized expert." Or even, "a leading expert." But alas.

Oh, Jon. I'm so sorry, but I think our brief affair was just too beautiful to last. I thought it was love, but it was just a sophomoric infatuation. Oh, but wait. You knew that, didn't you.

You Can Have Too Much Google

Ya know the stress I spoke of earlier? Well, sometimes to amuse myself and escape from the stress, I google random terms until I find something that makes me laugh really, really hard. It sounds challenging, but I find that as the wee small hours tick by it tends to get easier. I wouldn't share those things with you. Sometimes when I wake up, I can't even remember them.

But this, this was funny. It made me laugh so hard I counted it as my ab workout for the day. And so I give you the product of a lot of googling that had to do with my obsession with my ill-gotten five pounds.